So, the USStateField in contrib.localflavor got neutered a while back,
removing a number of items from its choices list which -- while not
actually US states -- are valid postal codes which the US Postal
Service recognizes and considers as "US" addresses. When this
happened, Django lost useful functionality: there's no longer any
field available that corresponds to what USPS will actually recognize.

And, predictably, now we've got ticket #9022 open, which started by
asking for support for US Armed Forces postal codes and has sort of
snowballed from there. The current proposal is for a
"USPostalCodeField" which corresponds to the US Postal Service's list
of postal codes:

http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/abbr_state.txt

Since it's likely that any code change we end up making will be fairly
simple, I'd like to get the politics straightened out ASAP so that
Django 1.2 can have something that'll actually be useful. Based on the
various arguments up to this point, it seems like no single field is
going to make everybody happy, so here's what I'd suggest:

First, deprecate USStateField immediately. It's not and never has been
just a list of states, and the implication that the things it lists
*are* US states seems to offend some people. So kill it, already.

Then, add two new fields geared toward the actual real-world use cases:

1. A field for the 48 "contiguous" US states and the District of
Columbia. Lots of services restrict to this for shipping options.
2. A field which accepts anything the US Postal Service accepts. Call
it "USPostalCodeField" in line with the patch in #9022, or call it
"USPostalBikeshedField" for all I care. But get a field that equates
to what USPS allows.

If anybody can make a really good case for it, maybe we could do a
third field that's a restricted set of states and territories, but in
my experience places that'll ship to one overseas territory will
usually ship to them all, so I'd be inclined to leave that out.

If this sounds good, I can work up the patch and get it ready for
review Real Soon Now, and then hopefully we can put this to bed for
good.


-- 
"Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct -- the best kind of correct."

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